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DOI Reference in APA-style

I have a simple, yet somehow intriguing question; how can I disable the DOI-reference in my bibliography in a word-document? When the DOI-reference of an article has been saved, it is automaticly included in the reference, I havent found a way to modify this...
Thanks for your help!
Joe

you can always create a new citation style, not a lot of work, although it'd seem like this should be possible in a simpler way..Open the chrome panel:chrome://zotero/content/tools/csledit.xulselect a citation with doi and the APA style.then look for the access macro, which looks like this:

then change the title of the styleon the top under<info> <title>American Psychological Association</title>

to something like APA- no DOI

copy and paste the entire style into a text editor, use the save as... option and save it as APAnoDOI.csl (the .csl is the important part here)then open the file with FF (or drag it to FF) and it will install automatically in Zotero.

In the post above adam.smith discusses how to create a custom APA style without the DOI. However, if you follow his instructions to the letter, the new style will overwrite the original APA style in your installation of Zotero, because the field hasn't been changed. The contents of this field, found at the top of the style*, is used by Zotero to identify the different styles. If you change it before installing the style, to e.g. "apa-no-doi, you will keep the original APA style and it will also prevent your new custom style from being overwritten when the original APA style gets an update.

Thanks Rintze it works well. I must have been deleting too many or too few lines - or something!

Perhaps I'm a bit out of date but I'm not really up on the doi stuff or how commonly it is being used, but I would rather not use them. It would be nice if a non-doi option was part of the standard install.

"Wow thank you so much to community collaboration. Especially Rintze for that link i was a bit lost trying to find a text editor to save the file in. Now on to figuring out how to remove capitalization"

Shouldn't you just edit the capitalization through the fields editor per item? Or is there a smarter way to do it?

Is the solution mentioned above to get rid of the DOI still the most recent workaround?

Shouldn't you just edit the capitalization through the fields editor per item? Or is there a smarter way to do it?

Not sure what capitalization is being changed, but CSL allows you to set capitalization & some of this could therefore be done through a modified style. The citation processor does not know about proper names or abbreviations, so many times you will want to modify the database entry in Zotero.

Is the solution mentioned above to get rid of the DOI still the most recent workaround?

I don't know if I'd consider it a workaround: the APA style calls for using DOIs & the "official" CSL file follows that style. Rintze made a second CSL file that does not follow the APA guideline & omits DOIs. I cannot think of anything else that should be done here...

Is there just a way that Zotero can just fix this in the next update so that a bibliography works from the get-go. It wouldn't be too much trouble to change it in a list of say 15-25 references, but when you're working up in the hundreds, it's a bit too cumbersome and seems that the code could be changed from the source. Capitalization is very important, as is proper citation that does not include the DOI for articles; I'm not certain how the DOI was deemed a part of "APA" style for articles. For instance, in capitalization. Sometimes Zotero will save a title that is in all caps. It seems that a macro code (which I can't write, but know these codes can do just about anything) could check the capitalization and change things to sentence case or whatever might be required.
I really love this program (it saves a lot of time), but I'd like it even better if I didn't have to scroll through my lists and delete out the DOI or change capitalization.

It seems that a macro code (which I can't write, but know these codes can do just about anything) could check the capitalization and change things to sentence case or whatever might be required.

Sentence case transformation is possible. It is often avoided because it will not handle proper nouns and other words that should still be capitalized correctly. I try to store most of my references in sentence case, as the other transformations work relatively well on it when they are called for.

not sure how that matters - APA specifically emphasizes the use of DOIs in the newest style guide, so they clearly feel it's a good idea to include it - beyond that it's up to the individual journal/department if they want to require it, so find out from the relevant source for your purpose.

As you say, it's a recommendation, albeit a strong one - on the APA blog they're quite clear about that:

http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/09/a-doi-primer.html
When do I include DOIs in my references?

thanks for the explanation, though I personally do feel that it matters. Many journals, etc require one to comply with APA format so there is no choice in that - authors pretty much have to do it.

A recommendation seems different to me. I might choose not to follow it (a journal might come back an demand it but I'd deal with that when & if it occurs), and in fact this is probably my preference.

Give this I would rather not be locked into using the doi recommendation by the software I'm using. And it is terrific that zotero doesn't lock us in - by allowing us to edit styles or install new one.

However, I think it would be really great if a non-doi-APA style was available in the style repository and I get the feeling that I wouldn't be alone

I doubt journals will give you a choice - the recommendation is really quite firm - if you follow the blogpost I link to, APA goes out of its way emphasizing doi so if you want to be certain you conform with APA that's what you'll have to do - unless you feel like it's a good idea to argue with a journal editor about the semantics of "recommendation" (if you read style guides, there are actually a lot of "should"s in there)

If you look around, many of the online style descriptions for APA treat this as a hard and fast rule:
http://www.liu.edu/CWIS/CWP/library/workshop/citapa.htm#doi
http://www.umuc.edu/library/tutorials/apa_doi/apa_doi-text.shtml
etc.

For the same reason I'm very hesitant to include a style that goes against APAs very explicit recommendations on the repository - if people really want it they can find it here (linked to above), but we shouldn't claim something as APA that may get people into trouble.

You make several good points, nevertheless it is frustrating when one wants to produce references that basically conform to APA format without the doi - whether one wants to do a reference list for oneself, students, colleagues, a book chapter, etc - and there isn't an easy option.

I've tried the link Rintze provided above but have found that it adds "Retrieved from ." to alot of my references. That is why I was looking around.

It maybe that there is a style similar to APA that would suit me - I will look. But I imagine that it wouldn't be too hard to indicate to users that a style isn't official i.e. Non-official-APA-no-dois. Or perhaps there are some older 5th or 4th APA edition styles that could be made available.

I think making both the DOI and the URL optional would be a great general solution. There are indeed many situations where one is using APA but the paper is not for a journal -- and the DOI and URL take up unnecessary space.

Also, sometimes I'm actually citing the print version but I captured the citation online so it includes a URL. I don't want to delete the URL as that is useful. But I don't want to cite the URL.

I guess what I'm not seeing is - if you don't care about a precise style for a publication, why not just use e.g. Harvard or Chicago author-date - i.e. a generic author-date style - which doesn't include DOIs or URLs in most cases. When we say APA we mean the style outlined in the APA manual of style - and that style includes DOIs and URLs - including for articles in print.

If you want an APA style that never prints URLs or DOIs, just create a custom style by deleting <text macro="access" prefix=". "/>from the style - done. If optional means optional for any item that's neither feasible nor desirable - after all that would mean additional user input for every item.

Maybe I should have been clearer on this in the beginning - every style in the repository needs to be maintained. E.g. when APA brings out it's next style guide we would need to make changes both to APA regular and to APA no-DOI. I'm just not willing to put in that work for a style that just reflect ideosyncratic preferences - that's what individual custom styles are for and that's why we're telling people how to do that.

Sure. For me, the issue comes up mostly during teaching as I tell students to use APA but don't necessarily want them to use url or doi.

Generally speaking, modifying styles manually is not feasible for most people. I mean, I can do it but if I could not reliably ask students, or even most of my colleagues, to do it. I suspect this is the case for a lot of academics in non-techie fields. Things on menus: ok. Things modified through configuration files: daunting.

I understand that it appears to be equally easy, but it is not for most people. A lot of people don't clearly understand the difference between, say, a Word file and a plaintext file, and often make a mess of things when attempting to modify a setting. The more widespread Zotero becomes, the more of an issue such things will be. I am on the verge of recommending Zotero to students rather than Endnote on the web. I understand the configurability versus ease-of-use trade-off and often the only solution is to have more than one way to do things. Menus for the general public, file manipulation / command line, etc. for a smaller group of people.

a) if you can modify a style you can give it to your students
b) if you don't care about exact APA compliance for your students anyway, why not tell them to use Chicago author-date?
c) the solution to that problem (which I agree exists) is to make styles more easily customizable - which is something that no one denies as a highly desirable feature, but it's hard to do well (Endnote does it, but their styles have more limitations). The solution cannot be to put every modification anyone could ever want on the repository.

was away for a couple of days but yes what I was looking for was a reference style that basically conformed to APA but without doi or urls - so I'm happy if it is not called APA, I understand the fear of misleading people!

a) Following up on the following convestian it is worth noting that chicago style isn't quite the same as APA without doi & url. Eg the date is not in brackets. Not sure if there is an alternative that fits. Should also note that Chicago sees to include doi's as well in any case.

b) I understand the reluctance to have controls to include/exclude options for each style because with all the possible styles possible options this could become unmanageble. Though I suppose only the options associated with each specific style could be illustrated.

c) in fiddling with the styles I find the url control frustrating because it does not allow one to exlude all urls - only those where page number are given, I think! The sources of citations are not always that perfect, so I don't have page numbers (reportes, etc). And often I just don't want any urls - as Zeynep says I'm often working with paper sources but just collecting the reference material on line.

I guess the back drop to this is the fact that the APA has just added on additional elements to referencing which they more or less say we must use, but which many of us don't want to in at least some circumstances.

Perhaps the easiest solution is to have APA 5th edition (I'm assuming this didn't kind-of-mandate doi's and urls) available so that people who want to use that can do so. I'm assuming that this might require less maintainance because the style is no longer being developed?